In 1500, the Chinese and Ottoman Empires were more advanced than Western nations and South America was more advanced than North America.

By 1731, an Ottoman writer asked, “Why do Christian nations, which were so weak in the past compared with Muslim nations, begin to dominate so many lands in modern times and even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies?” [1]

Had they not been closed to and uninterested in the West then, Chinese scholars would have asked the same question. One answer is sea exploration.

Portugal

The Age of Discovery began in 1415 when young Prince Henry (aka The Navigator) of Portugal, full of religious zeal, decided to wage war against Cueta, a Moor (Muslim) city close by in North Africa.

One of Henry’s officers captured a prominent Moor which he held for ransom, receiving in exchange 10 blacks and some gold dust.

The easy victory and treasures available from conquest excited the cupidity of his fellow countrymen. [2] They built several forts and settlements on the West coast of Africa from which many slaves were brought into Spain.

Henry justified his actions claiming his purpose was to convert slaves to Christianity. “In Henryspeak, conversion and enslavement were interchangeable terms.” [3]

Columbus

Born into a prominent family in Genoa, Italy, loss of the family’s fortune motivated young Christopher Columbus to seek his fortune at sea.

At 25, he sailed from Genoa only to be shipwrecked near the Portuguese city of Lagos from which Henry had launched his expeditions.

He made voyages in the Portuguese merchant marines and in the process became a self-educated master mariner.

Chris presented his plan to Portuguese King John in 1484 who, being familiar with the most current maps of the time, rejected the voyage as being too far.

Chris moved his family to Spain and in 1485 began a six-year courtship of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

Preoccupied in 1491 with the “reconquista” of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims, expelling Jews and Christian heretics in the Spanish Inquisition, they said “no.”

Ironically, it was a converted Jewish banker who convinced the royals to reconsider Columbus’s “Enterprise of the Indies” — probably sealing the deal by offering to help finance it.

Exalting from the fall of the Alhambra castle in Granada, seat of Moorish rule in January, 1492, and relieved of the expense, they approved of Chris “sailing until I reach the Indies.”